Monthly Archives: August 2015

I often say that my poultry behave like clockwork. Of course they don’t. The animal and plant kingdoms may act in predictable patterns, but those patterns are not dependent on anything as trivial as a clock. Except of course for those whose lives are closely dependent on modernized humans.
Today the dogs and I were up and out at 5:30 like usual. The dogs, being house dogs and dependent on me to walk them, are finely attuned to time. While they may just crack an eye if I head to the bathroom at 4 A.M., anything after 4:30 means they are tumbling out of their box, stretching and yawning and ready to GO! Read more

The news cycle is a blather with remembrances of Katrina.
I remember Katrina.
This no claim by moi’ to have been there during the storm, but I was there about a month latter. I would have been there the next week, but I got a number of cancellations, clients calling and saying was I aware other centers were no longer there, or customers asking me to wait until they got on their feet again.
So I waited. Read more

It seems that sometimes you don’t recognize how much someone was hurting you, until you make them stop. Then, just as you’ve become accustomed to not looking over your shoulder, a strange car pulls in the driveway. The panic, the desire to hide, to call for help, though you know they have seen you, and then the relief when the driver turns out to just be someone unexpected. Not necessarily someone you are delighted to see. More like – oh it’s just the Fuller Brush Man (for those of us old enough to remember door to door salesmen).
That degree of relief threw a spotlight on how much I had been allowing myself to be beaten down. Perhaps surviving those (in my case metaphorical) beatings somehow was affirming. I am strong. I made it through. I can do this.

I was strong enough to take it, but not to refuse it.

I began to walk away from the problem, with the help of family and friends, and the wounds began to heal. I guess it is kind of like a broken bone. It happens. It hurts. It mends. The ache gradually lessens, and once you are through it, it’s just another story in your life.
Hey remember the time I fell out of that tree, or off that horse, or tripped and fell and I broke my arm? It doesn’t seem too bad – until you think it’s going to happen again. The scabs have finally fallen off, but the skin is still tender, and you don’t want those wounds reopened.

I’ve been unhappy with NPR for many years now. It’s not just the necessary, yet tedious, day long, outright abusive, fund drives… or even the fact they now have corporate sponsorships. Might as well just take ads, and I really believe the sponsorships are one of many reasons, like partisan drive appointments to head NPR, that NPR has lost its way.
So if my major beef with NPR isn’t the fund raising, or the sponsoring, what is it? Read more